“Insomnia & So On” and “Against the Glass”

Insomnia & So On

• Fat bed, lick the black cat in my mouth
• each morning. Unfasten all the bones

• that make a head, and let me rest: unknown
• among the oboe-throated geese gone south

• to drop their down and sleep beside the outbound
• tides. Now there’s no nighttime I can own

• that isn’t anxious as a phone
• about to ring. Give me some doubt

• on loan; give me a way to get away
• from what I know. I pace until the sun

• is in my window. I lie down. I’m a coal:
• I smolder to a bloodshot glow. Each day

• I die down in my bed of snow, undone
• by my red mind and what it woke.

Against the Glass

• Rocking in my midnight robe, I am
• alive and in an eye again beside

• my kind insomniac, my phantom
• glass, companion and my only bride:

• this little window giving little shine
• to something. What I see I keep

• alive. I name the species, I define
• the lurch and glimmer, sweep and pry

• of eyes against the faint-reflecting glass
• by what they can and what I can’t

• quite grasp: I see a hand, still mine, outstretched
• in an attempt to catch the stars that drop

• as hailstones in the grass. I see them pass;
• these sleepless fingers slip from solid into gas.

Malachi Black is the author of the poetry collection Storm Toward Morning (Copper Canyon Press, 2014), a Lannan Literary Selection and a finalist for the Poetry Society of America’s Norma Farber First Book Award. Black is assistant professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of San Diego.